This month’s article is about why should you prioritise your health.
You might be young, you might be in your 30s, 40s, maybe in your 50s and it’s easy to think I’ve got 40/50 years left of life to live. Why should I be worried about my health? Why can’t I have some fun? Eat some good food, skip a run if I don’t feel like it.
These are questions that I’ve thought about, and it’s really only in the last seven years, and perhaps even less than that, that I’ve really honed in on health. And one of the major contributing factors to doing that is longevity. I’m now in my late 40s, but I’m starting to think about what life’s going to look like when I’m in my 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. And it’s an aspiration of mine to be fit and healthy at age 100.
I’m having to think about what that looks like then and what I’m going to need to look like now for me to do that. What I want to try and get you to do, is buy into the idea of not living for the moment all the time but really thinking about 30, 40 years’ time. Do you want to be in the position of looking back thinking I wish I’d done more, I wish I’d slept more, wish I’d moved more, wish I’d had better social connections, wish I’d done all these kinds of things.
You’ve probably got passions, aspirations, dreams, and it won’t be just about health and fitness, it could be about anything. Writing a book, growing up to see your great-grandchildren, but whatever it is, to get that sort of connection to health now, you need to think about those hopes, dreams and aspirations.
You’re the engine of your life. You’re the one who’s going to get those dreams achieved. But you aren’t going to be able to do that if you’re unhealthy, if you’re in and out of hospitals, if you’re in a chair, if you’ve got a stick, if you are on insulin because you’re diabetic – that’s not going to get you to the place you want to be.
Whatever your dreams and aspirations are, you still need to be the engine of those things. Take that as inspiration if you can to make some changes. Make those changes really small at the outset, the minimal effective dose. What’s the smallest thing you can do now that gets you a little bit closer to a healthier you? And then put that into place. When it’s cemented in and it’s just something you do automatically on autopilot, bring in another couple of other things. But appreciating that your health is at the very centre, the epicentre of your life and your dreams, your aspirations and everything else, that may help you to grasp the importance of looking at these things right now and not deferring it.